My students stumbled upon this author about a month ago, and since we do the Accelerated Reader testing program at my school in the states, I had to read the first book in the series to create a test over it for the students to get credit for their reading. A.R. often discriminates against independently or self published books, so that means I get more exposure to them in order to make up for the shortcomings of that program. I was hoping to see the author grow in his style and ability between the last book and this one. I wasn't completely disappointed.

I believe the target audience for this book must be teen girls. Unlike "Just Friends", this book is a bit more racy in its content. Although there's no graphic descriptions whatsoever, there's a lot about sex. If Will and Zac aren't having sex, they're being asked about it, or they're being congratulated or teased about it. It's not bad. That's life. I simply don't find it completely appropriate in relation to the target audience.

Still, this book has, in my opinion, better defined male characters and less defined female characters, compared to "Just Friends". Although Zac's humor and quirky personality are a lot like Ethan's, he has more depth. The male best friend, Ted, also has a surprising and likable depth of character.

The book also has a nice start. The characters drive the plot in this book. Over half of the book elapses before any true action develops, but that's not problematic because the characters are fun and engaging. I was surprised by the direction in which the plot turned, expecting something entirely different to happen. But after that, the ending was very predictable to me. Then again, I'm older than the target audience and they probably wouldn't see it coming.

I have two minor issues that kept me from enjoying this book to its fullest possibility. The first one being that the book doesn't quite fit its target audience. Either the style of writing needs to be aged up to a later teen / early adult category, or the innuendo and references should probably be lessened. The second issue is one that this book shares with its predecessor. Billy Taylor needed an editor, or a better one. I bought the Kindle edition of this book and it was riddled with errors. I'll admit that I teach Literacy, so I'm more of a stickler than the average reader, but several mistakes distracted me. Often words were transposed, such as "if you don't want to be me with" instead of "be with me". An editor would have easily fixed those errors. I also believe the author may have some sort of dialect in which "was stood" or "was sat" are acceptable. It should either be "sat" without the "was" or "was seated". This isn't the acceptable form in my area, especially when the typical verb tense in the rest of the novel doesn't match that form. I also caught a few issues with subject/verb agreement, such as "is" instead of "are". Noticing these things distracted me from the flow of the book, which was generally quite good.

There are some cliches in this book, that's par for the course with young adult romance. I don't fault the author for them. I'm glad to see that he developed a female character in his first book that had ambitious academic and career goals and another in this book that did not. So many teenagers can relate to Zac in that way. That bit of diversity tells me that this author has promise. I look forward to seeing what may come in the future.